Currently I am not running or playing an Arcanis home game. I did run a short 2 episode home game a year ago. Also, when I was a harvester, I was running a monthly Arcanis game at the local game store. We brought in some new folks now and again but it was generally the same core 3-4 people. They were also folks I game with on a regular basis, so we didn't want to have 2 game systems the same in a home game and a monthly open game.

Right now, I'm in 2 gaming groups with 1-2 people who overlap between the two. We are currently playing several times a week and alternate game systems. Right now, we are playing Pathfinder, Numenera, The One Ring, Savage Worlds: Deadlands, and 13th Age. As each game mini-campaign comes to an end, we start another one. We enjoy playing different systems and my hope is to get an Arcanis game going in one of those slots sometime soon. Our Numenera Game is ending soon, so perhaps that is an opportunity I can look into.

John

_________________- John Bellando

Kelb'Bakari Masalio, Dark-kin Altherian Corsair, Gentleman Archaeologist, and Wandering Bard"The highest compliment an Altherian can pay you is to shoot you with his flintlock. It means you were worth the expense."

I dont mainly because there is a large lack of monsters / pregenerated bad guys and while there are some plot hooks available from the current material, I'm mostly sold on the story that is focused on the "official" campaign

_________________--Josh ElliottOswald val'Inares V, The True King of MilandirHarvester Lord of the Eastern Fields of Iowa, and the dominions of Coralville and Dubuque

You do realize that each of the campaign adventures have monsters and pregenerated bad guys that you can either lift whole sale or modify? I haven't counted, but I would presume there to be dozens or such available for free.

I'm still a relative newcomer to the whole gaming scene, so I have only played a couple home campaigns myself, let alone written them. Also, I have enough trouble organizing tables for the Living campaign which means making one that isn't 'official' seems to turn people off.

Also, it seems most players like the 'official' storyline, possibly not wanting to play made-up home games because it screws with the established canon

Personally, I'd probably find a way to deal with it, but I'm not sure about others. I know that there was a group of people being run through the 3.5 adventures in Saskatoon who were doing a semi-Home game (the GM modifying later adventures based on story decisions which were not the same as in the living campaign), but there was still the published adventures that were the framework.

Overall, I think that if I were to choose one or the other, I'd prefer to keep the Living Campaign myself, and I think the same is true for many people that I have played with.

OH oh! dont I know about all of the created monsters in the mods! Lol, they are there but they are hard to use and remember / index. I've even created a bunch of my own on the fly when I need to challenge the group I was running in a hybrid home / official campaign. Many times the monsters in the mods are difficult to understand how to play well because their tricks are not as obvious as the could be.

the monster creation rules are ... convoluted and not easy to use, but that can be said about many aspect of this system.

the "Arcanis Story" is why I'm coming to the game in the first place, AARPG is an interesting system and well designed for the kind of story that Arcanis is trying to tell, but its very specific, everything about the system is very specific to the arcanis world and hard to adapt to other things.

But my home campaign uses hybrid 2e rules because thats the kind of story im trying to tell ( a hybridized version of the 2E red steel rules, dragons, ancient magic, and packing for survival) we are using something like arcanis weapon speeds (and 2e spell speeds but not strain) because that makes the 2e clock work a bit better and it meshs well with 2e rules, and I'm certainly lifting ideas from some of the 3rd ed arcanis adjacent books (unveiled masters is going to be a huge boon to me in the latter part of the campaign)

The Problem I see with running arcanis as a home game is because a large part of the fun of arcanis are the Secrets that are held and discovered and traded like jealous tidbits among the players, and that translates so poorly to a 100% home game. An interesting alternative is the "guided home game" where a smaller set of GMs are sworn to secrecy and let in a bit on some of the secrets for a small area and then run their home groups through that. That is something I would jump at the opportunity to participate in as a judge or a player. (look at the Shaintar model of play)

_________________--Josh ElliottOswald val'Inares V, The True King of MilandirHarvester Lord of the Eastern Fields of Iowa, and the dominions of Coralville and Dubuque

My home game is technically a living campaign game (though it's at my house and none of the players has any interest in playing Arcanis in an official living campaign event elsewhere).

The main reasons I don't run a purely home game (in order of importance):

Lack of time. I just don't have the time to come up with my own stories and adventures (and I'm not a good "winging it" GM).

Lack of published bad guys. There is the small bestiary section of the main book and the small bestiary book but there are many types/tiers of opponents not represented. With Arcanis, it would also be helpful to have an assortment of humanoids prebuilt as bad guys. As Henry mentioned, I could pull an assortment from the published modules but, as Josh said, it's not always easy to find what you want (and some mods have definite errors in the stat blocks).

I concur with Josh. I just posted in another section of the forums about the importance of a Monster Manual. Its an invaluable book that allows people to see what you have envisioned for the creatures which stalk these great lands! Having a variety of creatures great and small at your fingertips makes things allot easier on authors of home and living games.

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